Starship Engineer

Chapter 16 Any Water is Good Water

I felt guilty. Eve had calculated the odds that Samantha and the rest of the crew had an 88% chance, to make it to safety. That was a lot higher than the chances I would have had if they abandoned me on the planetoid. The escape capsule with the other Sapphire Empire prisoners had crashed into the planetoid shortly after Destiny’s Children had gone to FTL. For all my planning, I had missed foreseeing this action by the crew. I didn’t think they would go that far. It was a possibility that they would leave the crew on the planetoid with me, but killing them?

I contacted Eve. She was collecting everything out in space. There was a fair amount of drift, and she estimated 6 hours for the roundup. Each container had a beacon on it, so they were easy to locate. She had seven space-able bots assisting and could collect everything, weld it into a single mass, and accelerate it toward the planetoid. Eve would rendezvous with me in 19 hours.

I reviewed the fuel profile and sighed. Even though I had siphoned the fuel from the freighter, the mixture couldn’t be used on the marine drop shuttle for long. I wasn’t worried.

I spitballed out the scenarios and checked the mini drive on the shuttle multiple times leading up to this possibility. I would need to set up a fuel purification unit to process the generic fuel from the Destiny’s Children , but once that was done, I should have enough fuel to micro-jump up to 30 light years away.

I had six possible locations where I could get a larger starship to come back for the containers. Four of those destinations were in the Union, so I currently discounted them. The fifth was a system with just over 2 million people and was unlikely to have any starships for sale, but I could order a starship delivered there. My sixth option was just past the edge of the Union and in free space. It was called Silverstream. Silverstream was a massive space station that orbited a moon over a gas giant. The reason the station hadn’t been incorporated into the Union was it had not only human inhabitants but also a sizable population of Sylvan inhabitants.

Sylvan, also known as space elves, were a humanoid race with pointy ears. Their skin color came in a wide spectrum, whites, tans, browns, blues, greens, and yellows. Their hair was almost always silvery white. They looked mostly human, but they were on the tall side and lean. The Sylvan operated massive city ships hundreds of kilometers in length. The Silverstream was one such city ship, but it had been damaged so badly that it had been abandoned by the Sylvan more than a century ago. Humans occupied the ship now, and through some clever negotiation, they started a trade pact with the Sylvan. The Sylvan were extremely powerful, so the trade pact had shielded the Silverstream as an independent station. The Sylvan were rare in this region of space, and generally, humanity didn’t mess with them. The last time a human nation went to war with the Sylvan, they were wiped out. Every spaceship and space station that the human nation had in all of the star systems they controlled were destroyed systematically.

The station was considered off-limits to citizens of the Union. Only corporations were allowed to trade with the foreign entity. So I risked running into some Union ships there. On the good side there was supposedly a large market for star ships. I didn’t have a lot of information on Silverstream, but it was my best chance.

My shuttle was still descending, and I put on the exterior lights. The city surrounded the circular shaft. Checking the readings, the shaft was 209 meters in diameter and seemed uniform on the descent. There appeared numerous docking ports, balconies, and shafts during the descent. The scans I got from the crew really didn’t do this structure justice. I noted the few marks on the scan where they had explored but doubted they had included all their forays.

I brought up my autopilot and made sure I wasn’t being sent on a fools errand. I watched the screens and noted things that I wanted to explore when I had time. The alien language translator only noted numerical designations during the descent. I created a mapping program, and if I could find the directory, it would make things much easier. As I approached the bottom of the shaft the shuttle docked on autopilot to the landing pad about 200 meters from the bottom if the 3km shaft. This was where the water was supposed to be.

I put on my Sapphire marine powered armor. Unlike the suits I had prepared for the crew mine was at full functionality. I decided to just take a sidearm and two combat knives with me. As I was moving from the shuttle I stopped in my tracks. I had forgotten Shinade and Vanessa were shackled in the bay. My thoughts had been focused, and I was extremely distracted. Shinade’s eyebrow shot up at my attire.

I removed the helmet to talk. Pausing for a moment, I told them my crew had stranded me, I mean us, on the planetoid. I was working on a plan to get us back to civilization. Just before entering the tiny airlock, I told them their comrades had been killed and asked them not to do anything stupid before I returned. This was just going to be a quick EVA. I walked down a wide and tall corridor until I came to some large alien script on the wall. I used the translation software, and the writing said ‘Reclamation Facility B2’. Ok, the good news was there was a good chance I would find water here. The bad news was I might be purifying alien sewage. Traveling deeper, I found corridors that diverged and were clearly marked. The first was ‘Biomass Reclamation’, and footprints in the dust told me the crew went this way. I went down the corridor and found dozens of storage lockers broken open inside the rooms. I hypothesized that the aliens brought dead bodies here, and the possessions of the dead were stored here. I went further into a larger chamber that had lots of large machinery. I walked through quickly and didn’t identify any water tanks so left to try another corridor.

The next corridor was for organic fertilizer production, and yes, there were feeds from my first room. I did find an elevator in the back that apparently went to the food production area of the city. The next corridor went to living quarters. The living quarters seemed almost human except for the beds, which were slightly hourglass-shaped.

Finally in the fourth corridor, I found the water reclamation plant. I was a bit worried since I didn’t see any footprints. The facility was quite large, and the ceiling was over 100 meters. It was a bit spooky as I walked through because the tubing echoed as I tapped various tanks looking for water. I eventually found a tank I estimated was a quarter full…maybe 40,000 gallons. Score. I translated the alien script—purified water from biowaste. I was going to put it through my own purification equipment anyway. I noted the location on the map I created with my suit cartographer function. I found six other tanks with water…I had maybe 200,000 gallons of purified water and 100,000 gallons of unprocessed waste.

I found a schematic of the reclamation system as well for the entire city. There were six facilities, but this one was the largest since it was the only one that apparently processed bodies. I returned to my ship.

I had been exploring for 3 hours, so I wasn’t surprised to see the two women anxious when I came out of the cycled airlock. Ok, it was time to have a chat with Shinade and Vanessa. I got out of my suit, returned to the cargo bay, and stood before them. Vanessa asked if I was going to kill them.

If I had actually been stranded, I might have to extend my resources. I laughed, and it sounded a little too evil, even to my own ears. No, I told them I wouldn’t kill them, but they had to make a choice. Help me, or I could put them into a cell until I could bring them to a station. They started asking a bunch of questions which I answered patiently. When they exhausted their questions, they agreed to help. I unlocked their shackles and got them simple suits.

I wasn’t going to trust them with powered armor, and Shinade was smart enough not to even ask. We pulled the atmosphere in the shuttle tanks and opened the cargo bay rather than use the tiny airlock. I walked with them to the water tanks, dropping lights as I went. The lights were space flares and would last about thirty days before their fuel burned out. I showed them the tanks I wanted to be tapped and where to set up the hoses. The filtration unit would be set up just outside the shuttle and then fed into the tanks I had prepared.

I also had them set up four emergency stations equidistant to the facility. Each emergency station had suit patches, food, water, and oxygen. While they were doing this, I was going to explore the city some more. I still had a lot of time before Eve arrived with bot reinforcements.